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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

This is the perfect example of why developers should not write their own licenses.

- The first two paragraphs contradict each other. "deal in the Software without restriction", "Permission is not granted to use this software..." etc. Which one is it? Remember that ambiguity in contracts work against the side that drafted it.

- What is "machine learning models"? Is there an objective definition of it that a judge/jury/court can understand? Why doesn't the license include that definition?

- Where is the attribution clause?

- "MIT" in the title is a copyrighted term, so the license is itself likely illegal to publish.

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MIT is a trademark; even assuming it was original enough to warrant copyright protection, it was founded in 1861 (by someone who died in 1882). Even under today's expansive copyright duration scheme, any copyright would have fallen into the public domain half a century ago.

Agree on your other points.

names of things are not copyrightable, even the title of books and films are not part of the copyright (that's why we see different movies come out with the same title). The reason is, there is not enough space in a title to exhibit the type of creative expression that copyright is meant to protect.

> even assuming it was original enough to warrant copyright protection

> not enough space in a title to exhibit the type of creative expression

I think we're saying the same thing. See 37 CFR § 202.1(a). However, even if that weren't the case, it still wouldn't be subject to copyright.

Trademarks and copyright are different things. As long as the owner of a trademarks keeps defending it, the trademarks will remain valid.

This implies that unless MIT wants to lose their trademark, they must defend it, ie going after things like this.

And MIT is pretty clear on their willingness to defend their trademarks; https://policies.mit.edu/policies-procedures/120-relations-p...

Yes. Obviously. I encourage you to reread my comment; you appear to have misunderstood it.

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